People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1897 — ADVANCE IN SURGERY [ARTICLE]

ADVANCE IN SURGERY

HOW IT DIFFERS NOW FROM WHAT IT WAB FIFTY YEARS AGO. *he Bum* Of Mm Knife Cp to the Dfe. martaj of AsuMtbeate—Danger as Well M Ymtn In the Operation—First Use of BUmt by B*. William T. O. Morton. One at the most Interesting papers lead at the celebration In Boston of the fiftieth anniversary of the first administration of ether in a surgical operation, says the Philadelphia Record, was that by Dr. John Ashhnrst of this city on “Surgery Before the Days of Aneesthetfos. M It vividly reoalls the horrors of those days when the surgeon's knife was ftn object of far greater terror than now and inflicted untold -tortures upon the Conscious patient. “A study of the condition of surgery before the days of anesthesia, “said Dr. Ashhnrst, “reveals on the one hand a picture of heroic boldness and masterly Sell control on the part of the surgeon, and on the other a ghastly panorama, sometimes of stole fortitude and endurance, sometimes of abject terror and humiliation—but always of agonizing Wretchedness and pain—on the part of the unhappy victim who required the surgeon’s aid. ‘*The *pitilessness* which Ceicus urged as an essential trait in the operative surgeon was, before the days of anaesthesia, a feature in the surgeon's career which Impressed very strongly the pnblio generally as well as those Immediately connected with the operation. It Is interesting to recall that Sir James Simpson of Edinburgh, shortly after beginning his professional studies, was so affected by 'seeing the terrible agony of a poor Highland woman under amputation of the breast’ that he resolved to abandon ft medical career and seek other occupation. Happily his intention was reconsidered, ana he returned to his studies, asking himself, ‘Oan anything be done* to make operations less painful?’ and, as every one knows, in less than 20 years he became a high priest of anesthesia and the Introduoer into surgical and obstetrical practice of ether’s great rival, chloroform. “No braver or more gallant gentleman ever lived than Admiral Viscount Nelson, and,after his right elbow had been shattered by a Frenoh bullet in the assault at Tenerife he manifested the Utmost courage, refusing to be taken to the nearest ship lest the sight of his injury should alarm the wife of a fellow officer whose own fate was uncertain, and when his own ship was reached he climbed up its side without assistance, Saying: 'Tell the surgeon to make haste and get his instruments. I know I must lose my right arm, so the sooner it is off the better.’ ‘He underwent the amputation, ’ we learn from a private letter of one of his midshipmen, 'with the same firmness and courage that have always marked his character. ’ And yet so painfully was he affected by the coldness of the operator’s knife that when next going into action at the famous battle of the Nile he gave standing orders to his Burgeons that hot water should always be kept in readiness during an engagement, so that if another operation should be required he might at least have the poor comfort of being cut with warm instruments. “On the side of the surgeon we find throughout the ages a constant effort to diminish the terrors of operations and a continuous reprobation of the distressful, not to say cruel, modes of practice adopted by preceding generations. And yet the time is not very far distant from ours when they lopped off a limb by striking it violently with a heavy knife; that time when they knew neither how to stop nor how to prevent hemorrhage bnt by burning the part whence the blood jetted with boiling oil or the redhot iron; that time when surgeons armed themselves at every moment with pinchers, with burning cauteries and with instruments the representations even of which cause terror. “But the presence of pain was not the only evil dreaded by our predecessors in attempting important operations. The great risk of fatal accident from some involuntary movement of the patient was constantly present to the mind of the conscientious surgeon. ‘How often, ’ says Dr, Valentine Mott, ‘when operating in some deep, dark wound, along the course of some great vein, with thin walls alternately distended and flaccid with the vital current—how often have I dreaded that some unfortunate struggle of the patient would deviate the kuife a little from its proper course and that I, who fain would be the deliverer, should involuntarily become the executioner, seeing my patient perish in my hands by the most appalling form of death! Had be been insensible I should have felt no alarm. ’ “Coming down to the days more immediately preceding the date of the great discovery, we find that opium and alcohol were the only agents which continued to be regarded as of practical value in diminishing the pain of operations, though the attendant disadvantages of their employment were of course recognized. Meanwhile facts were accumulating the significance of which we now plainly recognize, but which excited no attention. “Sir Humphry Davy, in the early days of the nineteenth century, suggested the use of nitrous oxide gas as an anaesthetic in minor operations, and it was the custom at some of our medical sobools—at the University of Pennsylvania, for one—for students to breathe ‘laughing gas, ’ as it was then called, for diversion. But yet—and yet—surgeons went on, in every country, cutting and burning, and patients went on writhing and screaming, until on the 16th day of October, in tbs year 1846, in the Massachusetts General hospital, Dr. John G. Warren painlessly removed a tumor from a man who had previously been etherized by Dr. William T. G. Morton, and surgical anaesthesia became the priceless heritage of the civilized world.”